Seth Meyers Gets Kanye West To Laugh At Himself, Shall Now Be Known As The Kanye Whisperer

Seth Meyers is really starting Late Night off right this week. It was a great decision to have Fred Armisen as his band leader because they’re already so comfortable together. Then he had his other friendAmy Poehler as his first guest, which must have calmed his first-show jitters. Then last night he went all out and had one of the most controversial guests possible on his show — Kanye West. And you know what happened? It went really smoothly. Between this and Katy breaking up with John, Hell is now frozen.

Kanye’s kind of on a roll this week as well. Over the weekend he made some sincere comments about his late mother and his baby daughter that actually gave me all the feels, to the point that I’m comfortable using the phrase “all the feels.” And during Seth’s show he actually laughed at himself. Granted, he spends the rest of the interview rambling on about being a “sonic painter” and similar things. But the fact that he smiled, and on top of that the fact that he smiled at himself, is revolutionary. And I just checked his Twitter. No snarky hashtags, about Ben Affleck or otherwise.

The context of the laughter is that Seth decided to share an old SNL sketch that Kanye apparently helped write. The idea is that he interrupts various acceptance speeches, even at a pumpkin contest. It’s a nice reminder that Kanye doesn’t spend all his time praising himself in the mirror. But the best part comes when the clip is finished and Kanye actually appears amused. Seth mentions that Kanye is funnier than people give him credit for (yeah yeah whatever), and Kanye actually follows up with a joke. I usually watch Kanye interviews on the edge of my seat, but I think Seth Meyers tamed him. Bravo, Mr. Meyers.